Brave New Worlds: Exploration of Space invites you to enter the creative universes of five contemporary artists through sculpturally immersive installations. 

“Motivated by the legacies of Southern California as a place of artistic experimentation, a site for self-fulfillment, and a geographic zone of light and natural resources, these artists use their distinctive spatial languages to construct worlds that both challenge convention and ignite our senses. Projects include those by Kelly Akashi, Gisela Colon, Victoria Fu, Karen Lofgren, and Adee Roberson, with works that represent each artist’s understanding of our bodily connection to the world that surrounds us.:” – per website

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Larry Bell, Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest (2019)

“MOCA presents an outdoor installation by Los Angeles-based artist Larry Bell. Commissioned specifically for the Sculpture Plaza at MOCA Grand Avenue, Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest is a signature, space-defining work, at once creating a public art space while also echoing and highlighting the geometric forms that comprise the museum’s Pritzker Prize winning Arata Isozaki-designed building. This installation was generously gifted by MOCA Trustee Carol Appel, who has served on the board for four years, and her husband David Appel.

Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest extends Bell’s decades of experimentation with glass. With this work, the pioneering artist long associated with California’s Light and Space movement juxtaposes luminous reds in various saturations, the shades of which are lyrically called habanero, cerise, hibiscus, and carmine. The title refers to the protagonists of 1948’s Bill and Coo, a peculiar and delightful film whose cast is made up entirely of trained birds. The names of the film’s titular lovebirds were in turn drawn from an old-fashioned way to refer to the flirtations of young lovers: within the space of the Sculpture Plaza, a concave hollow defined by the surrounding forms of Isozaki’s architecture, the pair “bill and coo” while nestled in their home in the nest.

This sculpture is the seventh work by Bell to enter the museum’s permanent collection, underscoring MOCA’s commitment to collecting Los Angeles-based artists in depth and joining a rich array of works in MOCA’s collection by other artists associated with the Light and Space movement such as Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, and James Turrell. MOCA’s holdings by Bell include sculptures, drawings, and mixed media works, but Bill and Coo at MOCA’s Nest is the first commissioned work by the artist to enter the collection, and the largest and most significant of his work within the collection.”

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“Confronting insecurities and fears, embracing shortcomings, and contending with the burden of one’s own identity and truth are of paramount importance for becoming more concretely formed. My current studio practice maintains this endeavor: cutting through, digging out, excavating, laying bare wounds—past and present, temporary and permanent—on the surfaces of paper and canvas. 
—Nathaniel Mary Quinn

“Gagosian is pleased to present Hollow and Cut, new paintings and works on paper by Nathaniel Mary Quinn. This is his first exhibition with the gallery.

Quinn’s composite portraits probe the relationship between perception and memory. He rejects the notion of documentary portraiture; instead of depicting physical likeness, he illuminates subconscious aspects of the human psyche, coaxing forth manifestations of innate and repressed emotions.

While Quinn’s portraits might resemble collages, they are actually rendered by hand with oil paint, charcoal, gouache, oil stick, pastels, and gold leaf. He begins with a vision—a vague flash of a face from his past—that he feels viscerally compelled to translate into reality. To do so, he collects images from fashion magazines, newspapers, advertising, and comics, reconceptualizing the snippets as purely aesthetic imagery before methodically redrawing and repainting each one. In an impulse akin to the parlor game cadavre exquis, Quinn covers parts of his own composition with construction paper as he goes, so that no existing section influences the appearance of the next. Only when the work is complete does he remove the paper—revealing a visually disjointed yet psychologically unified portrait or figure whose genesis echoes the extemporaneity of human memory.” – per website

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“At this stage, I have been writing and thinking about what’s going on without trying to control it,” Martínez Celaya says standing with half his body facing the painting and the other toward me. He contends that “The Promise of the Most Whole” and much of the works in “The Tears of Things,” are more focused on “the land, and more about journey, and risk and transformation,” while the sea was a dominant motif in “The Mariner’s Meadow” at Blain|Southern, London. Presenting the roaring ocean in shades of gold, the painting titled “The Second Sign,” is a continuation in the artist’s preoccupation with gold. The terrain has shifted from the water to land which sparks the question for Martínez Celaya, “what happens when the entire landscape that you are engaging with seems to be transforming into gold?” The color gold can be considered an allegory for painting- the presentation of a shining, glistening surface that has risen from the ashes to serve as a beacon. However, there is a tension between the subject and the artifice of the surface. In a conscious decision, Martínez Celaya crudely renders the gold to suggest gold but also acknowledge the crudely painted paint.

While writing is an integral part of his artistic practice, the subjects of each painting are rendered without reference to any source, just as a writer doesn’t begin in pencil to trace over selected words in ink. The paintings undergo a revision just like a piece of writing. “There’s a lot of writing in my notebooks and I have this desire and hope that there will be a lot of text in these paintings when they’re done,” he says while mixing more auburn shades into the golden trunk. “I still haven’t figured out why it is that text appears sometimes early and sometimes later,” he explains. The paintings are often inscribed with words and this weight makes them feel like poems as Martínez Celaya suggests, “I think that sometimes it feels as if the paintings are poems anyway because the aspect of space between words is so important to them that they should be considered poems in themselves.” The narrative of his poetic paintings often shifts depending on who is reading the works, especially because Martínez Celaya’s personal story references turbulent cultural climates in his native Cuba and upbringing in Spain and Puerto Rico. To achieve autonomy from his work so that they are not dependent on his story and symbols, the artist commits to making his actions faithful. Painted in the artist’s light cursive hand, the same message appears on the highest point of the wall, looking down onto the studio space below. Looking up at the message the artist explains that “the idea is that your actions and your words will be the same. If I am saying something to you and the moment you leave I am acting completely different, then that’s kind of a lie that not only destroys you as an individual but destroys you as an artist.” Pointing to a table on the opposite end of the gallery, the artist refers to the photographs and objects placed along the wall. “None of those things are mementos,” he insists. “They look like they are, but they are not. They’re all rulers by which I measure my behavior,” he states after smudging the canvas with a blue cloth.” – per website

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Library of Ideas: A Course by Charles Gaines, Part One

“Charles Gaines, LA-based conceptual artist, faculty member at CalArts, and recipient of the 2019 Edward MacDowell Medal, will transform the Book & Printed Matter Lab at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles into his classroom. On the occasion of ‘Charles Gaines. Palm Trees and Other Works,’ he will conduct a ten-part lecture series on the tenets of aesthetics and critical theory in art, bringing his mastery of the field into a public setting.

The lecture series is free to attend, however, reservations are required and space is limited. Attendees will be emailed 72 hours in advance of the lecture and must confirm their space. Any unconfirmed spaces will be released to the waitlist.” – per website

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The Permanent Exhibition of Art of the Commanderie de Peyrassol

“Philippe Austruy wished to present works of art protected from badweather. In the beginning, he planned on building only a small chapel to put on display a work of Franck Stella that he particularly liked and which was stored in a small space in the winery. During a lunch, Diane and Bernar Venet suggested him to go further and create a permanent collection. This new artistic entity became an extension of Valerie Bach gallery « La Patinoire Royale », in Brussels.

In one piece, the permanent exhibition of Peyrassol is a vast room with natural lighting coming from the skylight. Its modern design was a real challenge: how to integrate modern architecture at a large scale without removing the intemporality of the historical buildings?

To solve the equation, the new space should not be perceived as a singular separated identity but needed to be designed as a covered space inside the path of the monumental sculpture, a giant hallway where people can wander inside, amid the vines. Constructed like a sculpture, the building breaks the code of classic architecture. There are no doors, no windows, no roof, inspired by the movement of Land Art.
On one side, you will find a monumental mural and on the other side a scree, typical of Peyrassol, these two walls are connected by a gigantic shape of weathering steel, above the ground, highlighting its shape by its horizontality.” – per website

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“In the Midi-Pyrénées region, nearly 80,000 people make a living from the aviation industry, the driving force behind the region’s economy:
manufacturers, sub-contractors, suppliers, design offices, service providers…

Between the first powered aircraft designed in secret in the town of Muret by Clément Ader, and the first flight in the skies of Blagnac of the A380, flagship of the European aviation industry, more than a century has passed.

To fly across the seas and the continents, first came the aircraft made by Latécoère and Dewoitine, then the Languedoc and the Armagnac.
At the end of the fifties Caravelle, the first French jetliner, proved to be a resounding success. Then in 1969 it was Concorde’s turn to take to the skies for the first time in Blagnac.

These aircraft were followed by the entire Airbus family, affirming Toulouse’s mission to fly higher, faster and farther.
This is also the story of the great pioneers of aviation.

Here, in the birthplace of global civil and military aviation, the Airbus Group laid the foundations of its head office in January 2014 and the commercial successes of Airbus and ATR boost the economy of the Midi-Pyrénées region.
For more than 30 years, the players and witnesses of this industrial, technical and human saga, as well as those who love aircraft and love to fly, have strived for this history to be forever remembered and shared. For the preservation of this historical heritage.

Aeroscopia, an aviation museum, addresses this expectation.

The foundation stone was laid on the 16th of June 2011.” – per website

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“The Venet Foundation is the culmination of more than fifty years of artistic creation and Bernar Venet’s encounters with an impressive roster of other major artists, who have become his friends, which has led to an extensive collection that is emblematic of minimal and conceptual art. Created in 2014, the Venet Foundation aims to conserve its collection, and to ensure that Bernar Venet’s work is presented in an ideal setting.

The Venet Foundation loans artwork to other cultural institutions around the world, providing access to a larger audience, and hosts annual exhibitions of works by other artists.” – per webiste

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“The Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght is France’s most important private art foundation and among the world-leading cultural institutions. It was created by Aimé and Marguerite Maeght, a visionary couple of publishers and art dealers, who represented and were friends with some of the most important artists of the 20th century, including Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, Marc Chagall and many others. The Maeght Foundation was inaugurated on July 26, 1964, by Charles de Gaulle’s legendary Culture Minister André Malraux, who was a close friend of the Maeghts. The Foundation was France’s very first private art institution and was modeled after American institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the Barnes Collection or Phillips Collection, which the Maeghts visited during their frequent trips to the United States in the 1950s.

Located near the famous village of Saint-Paul de Vence, 25 km from Nice, the Fondation Maeght receives more than 100,000 visitors every year in a unique architectural complex designed by Josep Lluís Sert, showing modern and contemporary art in all its diversity. Painters and sculptors worked in collaboration with the Catalan architect to create a place where art, nature and architecture blend in perfect harmony. The Foundation’s highlights include the Giacometti courtyard, featuring an exceptional ensemble of sculptures by the Swiss artist, the Miró labyrinth, a whimsical sculpture garden by the Catalan artist, monumental mural mosaics by Marc Chagall and Pierre Tal Coat, a pool designed by Georges Braque as well as a mechanical fountain designed by Pol Bury. Visitors can also enjoy the sculpture garden, with a rotating selection of works by Calder, Takis, Miro, Arp and other, two rooftop terraces with spectacular views, exhibition galleries hosting temporary exhibition as well as selected works from the permanent collection, a consecrated chapel, an art library and a gift and book shop.” – per website

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“VICTOR VASARELY is a unique artist in the history of twentieth century art. Famous during his lifetime, he distinguished himself from contemporary art with the creation of a new movement: optical art. The evolution of his life of work is inherently coherent, progressing from graphic art to the artist’s determination to promote a social art that is accessible to all.

Victor Vasarely was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1906. In 1925, after graduating from secondary school, he studied medicine briefly at the University of Budapest. Even though he did not pursue these medical studies past two years, Vasarely acquired a commitment to method, objectivity, science and the thirst for knowledge which would follow him all throughout his life.

In 1929, he enrolled in Muhely, known as the Bauhaus of Budapest. This school, founded by Alexander Bortnyik and modeled on the Bauhaus of Dessau, Germany taught the lessons of artists such as Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Josef Albers. The impact of Bauhaus teachings on Vasarely’s lifetime of work would turn out to be considerable. During this period he discovered Abstract art and was introduced to constructivism. This is when he produced his famous “Etude bleue” and “Etude verte” (1929). He also devised and supported theories which promote art that is less individualistic and more collective, art which adapts to the changing modern world and to the world of industry.

Under the pressure of the Hungarian government at the time, numerous avant-garde movements were being associated with the progressive movement that was developing in politics. Like a number of his compatriots, Vasarely left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930. He began working as a designer/creative artist at the Havas advertising agency and at Draeger’s, a renowned printer of the time. His graphic work in these agencies and later in Dewambez, allowed him to approach the world of design and aesthetics “while playing (his) role as a plastic artist.”

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